Whatever your view on Iraq, George Packer's long report, "Planning for Defeat," is must reading. In it, he contemplates the ugly realities of the various options left open to the United States in Iraq. Truly there are no good options, only bad ones. And nobody in Washington is thinking ahead. Packer:
In Washington, the debate over the war is dominated by questions about troop numbers and timelines—that is, by immediate American political realities. The country seems trapped in an eternal present, paralyzed by its past mistakes. There is little or no discussion, on either side, of what America’s Iraq policy should be during the next five or ten years, or of what will be possible as resources dwindle and priorities shift. If there is any contingency planning in the government, it’s being done at such a secretive, or obscure, level that a repetition of the institutional disarray with which America entered Iraq seems bound to mark our departure.Preparing a judicious withdrawal from Iraq will demand the integrated effort of the whole government, not just under this President but under the next one as well. “You just cannot pretend that the Iraq war never happened and everything can go back to how it was before,” the former Embassy official told me. “The status quo before 2003 no longer exists. We have introduced fundamental new disequilibriums into one of the most sensitive parts of the globe. How do you contain it?” He added, “People have to start thinking about these things—small study groups with military, State, and intelligence people sketching out what are the core interests on a regional level, and working back from that to discuss some options. If that’s been done, I don’t know about it.”
The Packer essay contains hard questions and unpleasant thoughts for people on all sides of the Iraq debate. It's profoundly depressing, but profoundly necessary to read. I'm not sure what I think of it, except that a) we have to get out some way, sooner rather than later, and b) that those who led us into this war under an illusion and botched the occupation so badly must be punished. That's pretty feeble, I admit, but the damage this administration and its Republican Congressional enablers caused to America's national interests, as well as to the people of the region, beggars description. After hubris comes nemesis. We will be living with the Iraq nemesis for a generation.
Add to Del.icio.us
Add to Technorati
Add to Digg
Add to Newsvine
Add to Facebook
Add to StumbleUpon
Subscribe
...establishing a permanent US presence in a region that contains the world's largest reserves of oil.
It does not become addicts to task such a disdainful tone with their dealer. Why can't we leave Iraq? Look in your damned garages, people.
Spoiled, yuppie brats, that's what we all are.
If "the surge" is clearing out military space, and we inevitably have to end the surge, that means the space cleared out will be useless for the inevitable drawdown (due to our troop rotation requirements).
I have been wondering about this myself, especially in light of what has happened before; how many times have we marched into Ramadi and Falluja, cleared out the AQI, and then left only to have them move right back in? It really all goes back to what has led to the surge in the first place: that the low-density forces in Iraq post invasion could only afford to protect a few places at any one time, that the key from the beginning was to have more boots on the ground. We tried to secure Iraq on the cheap, and now it is costing us.
Rod, thank you for pointing out this article. By the title alone, not to mention the publication, I don't think I would have given it a second thought. I don't want defeat of any kind, but it doesn't hurt to be real and plan for it. Mr. Packer is critical of both extremes, the knee-jerk Bush supporters and the left-wing Bush-haters. In the end, the reality is quite bleak: we're damned if we do, and damned if we don't.
For my own personal sake, I'd like nothing better than to be out of Iraq tomorrow. That conflicts with my sense of moral responsibility, both personal and corporate, that we have for Iraq, for what we wrought on those people and that region. This is what drives my point of view on the war at this point. The surge is one strategy, and in the end it will work or it won't. My fear is that it is much too late to bring about its intended goals. I don't think this venture was, by its very nature, doomed from the beginning; rather, that it was doomed by the mistakes: the reliance on technology over boots on the ground (overall post-invasion strategy), the military's insistence that there was no insurgency or that it was in its last throes, the military's desire to fight the insurgency with the Soviet-era high-intensity conflict model (this is of course not an exhaustive list, merely what comes to mind and has been on my mind since 2003). That the mistakes made have brought us to this point, there is no going back to see if some other way were possible; we're stuck with what we've got and have to make the best of it. I still think in the end it will work out, I'm just not so sure it will in my lifetime or to our country's benefit.
I've never felt comfortable opposing the war although I vastly
preferred no military action whatsoever after 9/11. In 2003 opposition
to the war was limited to anti-Bush cranks, a few dedicated pacifists
like Stanley Hauerwas, and Wendell Berry. One couldn't help but get
the impression, then as now, that the anti-Bush cranks where more
bothered by who was in charge than the war itself. I remain
unpersuaded of the case against Bush though I might well have voted
against him in 2004 if the Democrats had offered a pro-life candidate.
That said, I'm not exactly a blood and guts supporter of the war
either.
I think that's about right. One shouldn't be so comfortable and
reflexive for or against war. After all, who really gets these folks
who seem almost gleeful whenever America is laid low. Several of my
co-workers chortle with unrestrained delight with every casualty, so
certain are they that it will lead to Bush's eventual undoing. I don't
think I can ever be comfortable in that camp.
On the other hand, was there ever a more unfortunate choice of words
than "kicking ass?" War should properly make us all uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable that we can't defend our country without it, apparently.
Uncomfortable, with the loss of life and destruction of property and
livelihoods. One writhes between the discomfort of allowing an enemy
to carry on unchecked and the hapless waste of combat. It seems many
are too comfortable at either end of the spectrum, content to let the
enemy rage while maintaining some abstract purity or content to rain
destruction upon the just and unjust alike.
I think it's best to stay the uncomfortable course. The best hope, it
seems to me, is to provide security until a civil society has time to
emerge. In other words: an open-ended, multi-year (decade?)
commitment. It would probably be better as a UN project but our
national distrust of it and its own internal corruption probably makes
that impossible. So it falls to us to give the Iraqis time to forgive,
forget, and prosper. It may never happen but then again maybe if a few
more presidential candidates had voted their conscience rather than
political calculation in 2003 we wouldn't be in this predicament. This
is also the least likely course for a variety of reasons.
In the first place, the anti-Bush cranks are no less vociferous, if
anything more, than in 2001. Nothing less than his public humiliation
(and perhaps incarceration) will satisfy these folks. I think it's
fair to say that the anti-Bush faithful see any success in Iraq as
unacceptable because it would also be success for Bush (an ironic
by-product of their incessant linakage of the former with the latter).
In their view, Bush cannot be succesful because he is a stupid,
arrogant, liar, etc. To have refrained from the action in the first
place would have been admirable. Upending a nation and leaving once
boredom sets in and to hell those silly enough to live there is, well,
arrogant. I'm no less uncomfortable with the blood and guts war
supporters than I am with these folks but their star is apparently
ascendent.
More importantly, our great mushy center cannot hold. Ours is a nation
with a short attention span and Iraq is well past its 15 minutes of
fame. We are long past the point were much genuine discussion is
possible. The media narrative is now received wisdom. To suggest that
things in Iraq are better than they appear is to invite ridicule. The
whole thing is very messy and we are busy and need to get the kids to
soccer practice. We did not achieve victory in 100 hours, all is lost.
On and on.
That it is a foregone conclusion that the project is doomed is a
source of amazement. Absent the very short-term and fleeting good of
giving a hated president his come-uppance, does even the most ardent
anti-Bush crank really believe an immediate exit is the best option?
Commentators regularly assure us that this policy or that action has
doomed the enterprise as if all other wars in history were executed
with some sort of flawless acumen. We are told we cannot win but are
rarely told why as if this is somehow self-evident. It's time to cut
our losses and end this fool's errand is the refrain. What, one
wonders, would we do right now if this were day one? Few victorious
commanders in history would have inherited a battlefield with such an
obvious head start. Do we really believe that the situation can't
improve with 18 months, 5 years, 10 years of serious military and
diplomatic effort?
Of course we don't. We mean there is no neat, tidy, immediate, and
convenient solution. It's simply another way of saying the small cost
on our our part is too great. By small cost I mean that this war has
inconvenienced perhaps the least number of Americans of any war in
history. There are no war bonds or scrap metal drives. No blackouts or
fuel rationing. American life goes on as it has all along. Here I do
not imply anything about the very real and terrible cost of human
life, although that to is low by the standards of modern warfare, at
least on the American side (the Iraqis themselves have considerably
more to complain about).
We are, apparently, in the process of giving ourselves permission to
leave Iraq in the manner of the faithless husband seeking a new
mistress. I think it is certain that we shall leave too soon for Iraq
to do anything but descend into a chaos perhaps even darker than
Saddam's. Short-term conventional wisdom will lay the blame squarely
on Bush's doorstep and at least some of it will not be undeserved. He
made a good number of mistakes though probably not more than Lincoln
did during the civil war. The void left behind will likely metastize
into something ugly (almost everyone agrees on this) but we won't see
it for years. In fact, we will soon have a new president who, in all
likelihood, will be a Democrat and America can get back to its
previous obsessions of celebrity worship, money-making, fad diets,
sex, and self-help and we won't think at all about the poor, wretched,
people we left to their fates in Baghdad. At least for a while...
I've never felt comfortable opposing the war although I vastly
preferred no military action whatsoever after 9/11. In 2003 opposition
to the war was limited to anti-Bush cranks, a few dedicated pacifists
like Stanley Hauerwas, and Wendell Berry. One couldn't help but get
the impression, then as now, that the anti-Bush cranks where more
bothered by who was in charge than the war itself. I remain
unpersuaded of the case against Bush though I might well have voted
against him in 2004 if the Democrats had offered a pro-life candidate.
That said, I'm not exactly a blood and guts supporter of the war
either.
I think that's about right. One shouldn't be so comfortable and
reflexive for or against war. After all, who really gets these folks
who seem almost gleeful whenever America is laid low. Several of my
co-workers chortle with unrestrained delight with every casualty, so
certain are they that it will lead to Bush's eventual undoing. I don't
think I can ever be comfortable in that camp.
On the other hand, was there ever a more unfortunate choice of words
than "kicking ass?" War should properly make us all uncomfortable.
Uncomfortable that we can't defend our country without it, apparently.
Uncomfortable, with the loss of life and destruction of property and
livelihoods. One writhes between the discomfort of allowing an enemy
to carry on unchecked and the hapless waste of combat. It seems many
are too comfortable at either end of the spectrum, content to let the
enemy rage while maintaining some abstract purity or content to rain
destruction upon the just and unjust alike.
I think it's best to stay the uncomfortable course. The best hope, it
seems to me, is to provide security until a civil society has time to
emerge. In other words: an open-ended, multi-year (decade?)
commitment. It would probably be better as a UN project but our
national distrust of it and its own internal corruption probably makes
that impossible. So it falls to us to give the Iraqis time to forgive,
forget, and prosper. It may never happen but then again maybe if a few
more presidential candidates had voted their conscience rather than
political calculation in 2003 we wouldn't be in this predicament. This
is also the least likely course for a variety of reasons.
In the first place, the anti-Bush cranks are no less vociferous, if
anything more, than in 2001. Nothing less than his public humiliation
(and perhaps incarceration) will satisfy these folks. I think it's
fair to say that the anti-Bush faithful see any success in Iraq as
unacceptable because it would also be success for Bush (an ironic
by-product of their incessant linakage of the former with the latter).
In their view, Bush cannot be succesful because he is a stupid,
arrogant, liar, etc. To have refrained from the action in the first
place would have been admirable. Upending a nation and leaving once
boredom sets in and to hell those silly enough to live there is, well,
arrogant. I'm no less uncomfortable with the blood and guts war
supporters than I am with these folks but their star is apparently
ascendent.
More importantly, our great mushy center cannot hold. Ours is a nation
with a short attention span and Iraq is well past its 15 minutes of
fame. We are long past the point were much genuine discussion is
possible. The media narrative is now received wisdom. To suggest that
things in Iraq are better than they appear is to invite ridicule. The
whole thing is very messy and we are busy and need to get the kids to
soccer practice. We did not achieve victory in 100 hours, all is lost.
On and on.
That it is a foregone conclusion that the project is doomed is a
source of amazement. Absent the very short-term and fleeting good of
giving a hated president his come-uppance, does even the most ardent
anti-Bush crank really believe an immediate exit is the best option?
Commentators regularly assure us that this policy or that action has
doomed the enterprise as if all other wars in history were executed
with some sort of flawless acumen. We are told we cannot win but are
rarely told why as if this is somehow self-evident. It's time to cut
our losses and end this fool's errand is the refrain. What, one
wonders, would we do right now if this were day one? Few victorious
commanders in history would have inherited a battlefield with such an
obvious head start. Do we really believe that the situation can't
improve with 18 months, 5 years, 10 years of serious military and
diplomatic effort?
Of course we don't. We mean there is no neat, tidy, immediate, and
convenient solution. It's simply another way of saying the small cost
on our our part is too great. By small cost I mean that this war has
inconvenienced perhaps the least number of Americans of any war in
history. There are no war bonds or scrap metal drives. No blackouts or
fuel rationing. American life goes on as it has all along. Here I do
not imply anything about the very real and terrible cost of human
life, although that to is low by the standards of modern warfare, at
least on the American side (the Iraqis themselves have considerably
more to complain about).
We are, apparently, in the process of giving ourselves permission to
leave Iraq in the manner of the faithless husband seeking a new
mistress. I think it is certain that we shall leave too soon for Iraq
to do anything but descend into a chaos perhaps even darker than
Saddam's. Short-term conventional wisdom will lay the blame squarely
on Bush's doorstep and at least some of it will not be undeserved. He
made a good number of mistakes though probably not more than Lincoln
did during the civil war. The void left behind will likely metastize
into something ugly (almost everyone agrees on this) but we won't see
it for years. In fact, we will soon have a new president who, in all
likelihood, will be a Democrat and America can get back to its
previous obsessions of celebrity worship, money-making, fad diets,
sex, and self-help and we won't think at all about the poor, wretched,
people we left to their fates in Baghdad. At least for a while...
>>The democrats have controlled both houses of congress for over six months.
Senate rules require an approval vote of 60% before a bill can be brought to the floor.
Post a Comment
By submitting these comments, I agree to the beliefnet.com terms of service, rules of conduct and privacy policy (the "agreements"). I understand and agree that any content I post is licensed to beliefnet.com and may be used by beliefnet.com in accordance with the agreements.